by Morley
Seaver

With rising electricity and
oil costs, a new heating system from Prince Edward Island might
be the answer for home heating. The fuel used? Wood chips.

A recent tour and workshop at
the farm of Ron McRae, in Bainsville, Ont., 15 miles east of
Cornwall, turned many sceptics into believers. McRae is a cash
cropper and his home, shop and parent's home are all together in
the middle of the property.

He began heating with wood in
the early 1970s, when the energy crunch helped him decide that he
could save money by installing wood furnaces. They used this
heating system up until about three years ago.

Says McRae, "At that
time, I decided that it would be more efficient and less
labour-intensive if we were to get all of our wood-burning in one
centralized location, so that's when we put the underground heat
pump in. The system worked well but the furnace itself was
inefficient. It would use a lot of wood and since I was stoking
it with four-foot cord wood, it was pretty hard manual work. What
I wanted to do was get something that would eliminate that manual
labour and also burn the wood more efficiently."

McRae started to look around
for alternate systems and came across the idea of a wood chip
burner. There were only two manufacturers that could provide him
with a system - one in P.E.I. and the other in Vermont. At the
time, the P.E.I. system was more attractive and McRae purchased a
unit.

The unit doubles as a heating
system/water heater. "The wood chips are metered into a
gasifier at a pre-set rate," says McRae. "The way that
this fire is different from conventional wood fires is that we're
metering the fuel in, which is the wood, and we're giving it the
right amount of air to burn all of the fuel up. In a conventional
wood burning system, you put all of your fuel in at once and
restrict the air so that you don't burn it up too quickly. And
when you do that, you can't burn it as efficiently."

The wood in the gasifier is
subjected to free-burning and then as the smoke and gas leaves
the gasifier, the secondary air is added and the combustion is
completed at about 1800 degrees F. Because of the high
temperature, McRae says that most of the smoke that comes out of
the chimney is eliminated.

"We've had the scientific
guys out monitoring the smoke and the carbon monoxide is very,
very low. So because of this, the system is very environmentally
friendly. If you think about other heating systems, years down
the road, will they still be allowed?"

Roger Samson of REAP-Canada
(Resource Efficient Agricultural Production), a research
organization based at the Macdonald Campus of McGill University
in Montreal, says there are a few reasons why more people across
the country will turn to this type of heating system.

"There's been a lot of
improvements in terms of combustion technology so we're dealing
with more efficient units that are cleaner burning, less
expensive and more reliable and safer. The other reason is that
conventional energy costs are going up. And people are becoming
more interested in woodlot management because the timber prices
are so high."

Samson said there's a problem
in dealing with wood waste. "I believe that this fall in the
U.S., there's a new rule that no clean wood waste can be
land-filled. So there's got to be an alternative outlet for that
material. Efficient combustion systems would represent an
excellent way to utilize this material."

According to Samson, P.E.I. is
the leading province in the country in terms of wood chip
combustion technology. There are about 60 units installed there,
mostly in agricultural setups.

In eastern Ontario, people
will be getting a break from the federal government. Under a
project co-sponsored by the Eastern Ontario Model Forest program,
a limited number of people will be subsidized up to 50% for
installing these systems.

Samson says that the average
system costs about $18,000. "You do have a large capital
cost at the beginning," says Ron McRae, "but you have
to look at the savings. We heated the houses and shops from early
November until late April. And we kept the houses very
comfortable, about 72 degrees. I calculated roughly, against the
current price of oil, that our fuel cost is one-third of what we
would pay for oil. And then you have to think that oil is about
one-half of what electricity is."

"I would definitely do it
all over again if I had to," says McRae. "I've been
through 20 years with burning wood and this is getting close to
state of the art. The thing that always bothered me about burning
wood was the smoke. I've always known that there is energy in
that smoke, that we're wasting and polluting our environment at
the same time. This system is able to burn that complete and
that's what I've been looking for, for such a long time."